Arts & Entertainment

Best Original Comedy Company Minneapolis 2011 - Joking Envelope

Joseph Scrimshaw has long been a ubiquitous presence on the local comedy scene, renowned for his work with sibling Joshua in the Scrimshaw Brothers Comedy Team, bestselling shows at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and collaborations with Rockstar Storytellers. In 2009, however, Joseph Scrimshaw (along with wife/business manager Sara Stevenson) launched his own production company, allowing for the unfiltered expression of his rousingly idiosyncratic comic sensibilities. Deriving its name from a Sigmund Freud essay on comic theory, Joking Envelope has become synonymous with absurdist concepts, indiscriminate wit, and skewed (though keenly observed) social commentary. Best of all, Joking Envelope productions tend to be convulsively funny. Cast with some of the finest performers in the Twin Cities theater community, Joking Envelope offers a slate of original Scrimshaw comedies each season. In addition, the production company has collaborated with other noteworthy humorists, most recently former Mystery Science Theater 3000 writer/performer Bill Corbett on last winter's Super-Powered Revenge Christmas #1, a twisted reconstruction of Yuletide mythologies presented as a superhero comic. Innovative and irreverent, Joking Envelope demonstrates that comedy and intelligence need not be mutually exclusive.